Untitled Life
by pollywantsa
Summary: This story grew out of Gatchaman 1x27 - Galactor's Witch Racer, where Joe undertakes a race across Africa with a potential Galactor informant. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for both of them, the informant dies before she can tell what she knows.


Untitled Life   
Lee (2002)   


This story grew out of Gatchaman 1x27 - _Galactor's Witch Racer_, where Joe undertakes a race across Africa with a potential Galactor informant. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for both of them, the informant dies before she can tell what she knows. This episode fascinated me in both its BOTP and Gatch incarnations. It is moody and dark and ultimately the entire exercise was futile… a bit of reality in an otherwise fantastical world. 

The Gatchaman Universe belongs to Tatsunoko Productions, and I am forever grateful.   


* * *

  
It was hot and crowded in the bar and I had to get out. There were too many strangers around me, too many unknowns, and I couldn't afford this luxury. I had to keep moving. I'd been on the run for three weeks now. It had been three weeks since Lucy died. Three weeks since I had lost everything. 

Stepping out into the cold air I glanced around. Being a fugitive had made me furtive, untrusting. I don't know what I really expected. Galactor goons to pop out of an alley and blast me into oblivion? Was it going to happen like that? Or would I die at the hands of a Devil Star, or a Blackbird... a Devil Star more than likely. And probably somebody I knew. 

I was shoved from behind and I realised I was standing in the doorway to the bar, lost in thought. I stepped to the side and slumped against the brickwork. What was the point of running? I should just curl up into a ball and will myself to die. They were going to get me eventually. 

On the opposite curb a girl was tending to a bike. She seemed to be having some trouble, but it looked like she knew what she was doing. Lucy knew bikes. Lucy knew cars. Lucy was a racer, and it was after her last race that she had died. Not in a crash, which was what I had always expected. She was killed by her own kind. By Galactor. 

I found out when Ursula called me. Ursula was a friend of Lucy's, a Devil Star, but I wasn't supposed to know that. I wasn't supposed to know a lot of things but Lucy told me, in the way that close friends or lovers talk about their work. She told me many things, but she kept many secrets too. So, one bright afternoon exactly three weeks ago, when Lucy was away doing her secret things, Ursula called. "Lucy's dead," she said. "Leave now or you will be too." And she hung up. I held onto the receiver for a long time, listening to a silence that seemed about to consume me. Lucy was dead. I knew why she was dead. And Ursula was right - Galactor would be here any minute to destroy all traces of Lucy. I was a trace of Lucy, and one that knew too much. I had run. 

The wind was cold, and I was suddenly aware that the girl with the bike was looking at me. I had been staring, I realised. Embarrassed I looked away, then looked back. She was still looking at me. She smiled faintly, a small curve to her pink lips. They were nice lips. Cute. In another time and place I might have wanted to kiss them. But I felt sick, and I think I almost cried. The girl seemed to sense it and approached me. 

"Are you okay?" she asked. "Do you need any help?" 

I couldn't answer. I just stared at her. Her huge eyes and dark hair. Her shirt with the number 'three' on it. Three. Three weeks since my life had been destroyed. 

"My name's Jun." She looked at me, then turned to glance back at her bike. We weren't in the best part of town, and I wondered, briefly, what she was doing here. 

She looked back at me, and when I didn't respond the smile left her lips, and she made as if to leave. 

"My names Jess. Jessica." I sounded foolish. 

She stopped. "Jess. Do you need help? You seem lost." 

"I am. I …" What could I say? This girl seemed so young and innocent. Should I just blurt out that I was on the run from Galactor? What would she know of such things? Instead, I remained silent. 

She merely looked at me, then seemed to make a decision. 

"I can offer you a place for the night. If you want…" 

One night. Could I afford to stop for one night? I was tired, and I wanted to take this offer from a stranger. One night. I was so tired of running. "Yes. Please.. if you don't mind, I'd…" 

"Good," she said, leading the way to her bike. 

+++ 

We pulled up outside a snack bar. It was called the 'J'. 'J' for Jun, I thought. She confirmed that she owned the bar, and that as I would be sleeping in the bar area I would have to wait till closing. She seemed embarrassed at that. I don't know why. She was offering a place to stay to a perfect stranger, for no good reason. I would be grateful for the floor. I managed a smile and followed her in. It wasn't too busy, with mostly young couples dotted around the small booths. A man was singing 'My Way' off key on the karaoke stage, and I figured closing wasn't too far away. A kid who looked to be around 12 stood behind the bar, wiping glasses. I noticed he had a big number 'four' on his shirt. 

"Hey sis!" he shouted when he saw Jun. "Where you been?" 

"Had a bit of bike trouble," Jun replied, snatching the towel off him and flicking him with it as he darted away. 

"Jimpei, this is Jess," she was saying. "She's going to spend the night." 

Jimpei looked at me, and if I hadn't been looking back at him I think he would have rolled his eyes. 

"Sit down Jess," said Jun. "I'll get you something to eat." 

"No, thank you," I replied. I really couldn't eat. Had hardly eaten for days. I had money, because I'd had the sense to grab some when I abandoned the house, but I just couldn't eat. Jun smiled and passed a coke to me. "Thanks," I said, and hunched over the bar. 

Time passed and I sat there, letting the coke get warm and listening to drunken renditions of Elvis Presley songs. Jun and Jimpei passed in front of me from time to time, busy with their work. I wished myself invisible and willed the patrons home. I really needed to be alone. Needed time to think. Work out what I was going to do. 

The door opened and a draft blew in. I didn't really register until Jimpei shouted out "Aniki!" Apparently Jun and Jimpei had an older brother. Glancing up I saw a dark-haired youth, pretty, smiling in the doorway. You couldn't miss the number 'one' stamped on his shirt. I was about to return my gaze to the bar when another man stepped into the doorway, Number Two separating from Number One, and I froze. I knew this man. Joe Asakura. He was Lucy's racing partner for the Transcontinental, her last race. He was with her when she died. 

He was the man she was going to betray Galactor to. 

His eyes met mine for an instant. They were cold and hard and I knew he knew me, though he gave no indication of it. He looked at me for a second too long then turned away towards Jun, who was grumbling about something, then he and Number One moved to a booth. 

I had never met Asakura formally, though I had accompanied Lucy to the track for some practice runs before she had left for Africa. He had seen me there, of course, and Lucy must have told him who I was - she had told me who he was. 

When Lucy had let me know who she was racing with, I had gotten very angry. And very jealous. He was handsome - in a scary kind of way. I suspected they had a past and I could see the attraction. I worried that she wanted to do more than race with him when they went to Africa, then she told me why she was doing the Transcontinental, why she was racing with Joe Asakura. He was ISO, and Lucy wanted to betray Galactor. 

If I'm honest, I think then that part of me expected to never see her again. 

Minutes passed, and I could feel Asakura's eyes boring into the back of my head as I stood up. As I moved for the door I saw him stand, but I kept walking anyway. I had to get out, had to get away. Bursting out into the street a wave of panic washed over me and time froze. Where was I? How would I get out of this? I wanted to scream myself into oblivion, but it was useless. I had tried that before. And then the door opened and closed and he was there, his cool grey eyes on mine, wind tousling his hair, and he said simply "I'm sorry." 

"For what!" I was incredulous. 

He looked sad. Tired. "For Lucy. I'm sorry." 

I stared at him, at the last person to see Lucy alive, and my tears came. I couldn't stop them. Nobody had cared before. For me, or for Lucy. Not one person on this earth had cared about her passing, expressed grief at the loss of her life. And I hadn't been allowed to grieve, the pressure of staying alive occupying my every thought. And here was a stranger, a man to whom Lucy was merely a source of information, telling me he was sorry. 

I couldn't bear this sympathy and this grief and this despair any more. I couldn't bear his sad and hard eyes fixed upon mine and I ran. 

I ran and I ran and I ran. 

+++ 

It has been two days since then, and here I am at the track. I watch Asakura's car doing laps as I sit in the bleachers, waiting. I have decided I want to know, to really know, what had happened to Lucy, and Asakura is the only one who can tell me. He might take me in, but as I wasn't Galactor I wouldn't be much use to the ISO. Galactor would know where I was then, of course, and that would be the end of it. But I was beyond caring any more. I welcomed an end to it. Besides, if Asakura had wanted he could have had me, or killed me, that night at the 'J'. He hadn't. 

Instead, he had made me cry. 

Asakura finishes his laps and I make my way down into the pits. He has seen me of course, and is waiting for me. 

"This way," he says, his voice deeper than I remember. I follow. We sit in a secluded area of the track, on a bench. Side by side like friends. He seems tired, weary. Sighing, he rubs at his forehead and asks me what I want to know. 

"I want to know," I say, "how was it for her at the end? Did she achieve what she set out to do? What she was willing to die for?" 

It seems he doesn't know what to say. How to begin. He looks at me and I look at him, and I think I would like to be held by him, just to feel his warmth, to be comforted. To feel something of what Lucy might have felt. But of course that isn't going to happen. So he begins. 

"It seemed terrible, long and... painful. She struggled, but she was being eaten from the inside. She tried to stop it, tried to control it, tried to run…. there was nothing I could do. Nothing." 

He stops, staring off into the blue, blue sky, and I study his profile while fighting back tears. I can feel why Lucy sought him out, why she wanted to tell him secrets she could never tell me. 

He stares at the sky and continues. "She didn't manage to tell me what she wanted, so she died in vain. Is that what you wanted to know? That her efforts were wasted? That her life was wasted? That Galactor _won_?" 

His voice has become hard and he seems angry now. Angry at Lucy. Angry at Galactor. Angry at himself for not being able to prevent the unpreventable. 

"I wanted to know it all," I say, "even if it was terrible." 

He looks down. The thought comes that Asakura also is running, that perhaps he too is near death. That he dances with it often. 

I stand and I touch his shoulder. "Thank you. For being there at the end." 

He leans forward, his hair obscuring his face, hiding himself from me, and I leave him. I make my way through the bleachers seeking an exit, when one presents itself to me. Ursula. Her face is stained with tears, and she clutches blindly at me, holds me. It feels good to be held by somebody I know, and she is saying over and over "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I can feel her sadness, her tears cool on my neck, and I say "Ursula, it's alright, it's over…" and she stands back, face crumpled in grief, and hands me a single rose. I've seen roses like this before. Lucy kept them in a vase by the door. A strange kind of joke, but I don't care for jokes any more. The rose reminds me of Lucy. I hold tightly to this gift in remembrance, twisting the metal stem slowly in my fingers, considering. I turn to look at the sky, the world, Asakura. I can see him moving suddenly, recognition and horror twisting his features, and I hold the rose tighter. 

And then it is over. 

+++ 


End file.
